


Suspicion

by Hekate1308



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Gen, Morse is a Thursday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-08 00:00:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21226412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hekate1308/pseuds/Hekate1308
Summary: They had the Captain back - they had Endeavour back. They had found him.And yet, certain people couldn't help but realize something was wrong.





	Suspicion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [imaginationtherapy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginationtherapy/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Rusty Cage](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21033488) by [imaginationtherapy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginationtherapy/pseuds/imaginationtherapy). 

> Yes, we are writing fanfiction about fanfiction about my fanfiction now because I have been battling a cold and feeling self-indulgent. Thanks very much, imaginationtherapy, for allowing me to play around with your story!

For the first time in a week, Joan felt like she could breathe. A week of the members of the Guard not meeting her eyes when she went to work, a week of Peter Jakes running himself ragged (and since he’d given Dev more than a few lectures on the subject, boy, did he have a storm coming), a week of worry and pain in her parents’ and Sam’s faces and knowing their expression only reflected hers.

But it was over. They had found Dev. A little banged up, sure, and tired, and in desperate need of some looking after, but they had found him.

It was his first night back home. Their home; he still kept the flat he’d lived in while the spell was in place, but Mum made him stay over more often than not, and she definitely wouldn’t have allowed him to sleep there tonight. She’d made dumplings and fussed over him, naturally, and –

There it was. The reason Joan hadn’t gone to sleep yet, even though they were all exhausted. The reason she was currently drinking tea in the dark kitchen.

The reason she couldn’t help but feel… apprehensive.

Back when the spell had been in place, she had flirted with Dev – only to thoroughly regret it after she had remembered. He’d tried to tell her that he hadn’t minded, of course, but she knew him better than that – it must have hurt him deeply.

And so, sitting across from him at the dinner table, she’d looked up from her stew and dumplings tonight and seen –

Seen –

No. It was impossible. Dev would never look at her with such a lecherous gleam in his eyes, like some of the customers at the bank had been wont to do. Certainly not.

He wouldn’t. _He wouldn’t_. She kept repeating the words to herself as if they would eventually make sense, would make it true, but she knew what she had seen.

She’d barely been able to finish her dinner afterwards.

Maybe whoever had taken him had done even worse to her brother than they had previously thought. Maybe that was the explanation. Maybe she had just imagined it after all. She clung to the last explanation desperately, trying to elevate the feeling of wrongness that had settled behind her breastbone.

Joan took a few deep breaths. Seemed liked she had to make a decision.

Going to Dad or Jakes was out of the question. They were both exhausted, and anyway, it had just been one glance, and she couldn’t be sure about that.

But what she could do was keep a close eye on Dev in the days to come. She did, after all, work for the Guard now, and ever since she did so, they had made a habit of having lunch together several times a week. Plus, they had always been close (apart from The Lost Years, as she had come to call them) so no one would suspect a thing.

Yes. She’d watch out for her older brother.

It was the least she could do.

* * *

Win knew better than to worry, because – well, she knew her son. Knew both the boy they had lost and the extraordinary man he’d become.

But, as they had learned in a brutal and abrupt fashion, being the Captain of the Guard didn’t mean he was immune to harm. A whole week. A whole week their boy had been gone.

And now, instead of sitting and healing in the safety of their home, he had gone out without telling them where he was headed, and that had been several hours ago.

Night had fallen in the meantime. Joan and Sam were in their rooms, probably so that they wouldn’t see them fretting.

Win knew she was.

She was sitting in the living room, completely still, waiting for news. Fred, unable to take it any longer, had eventually rushed out to look for Dev, but someone had to stay around just in case…

She clasped her hands tightly and remembered other nights like this, nights during the war, where she had sat up anxiously listening for the horns that informed them of another air strike…

But Dev had been sleeping safely in his cot next to her then (or as safe as anyone got in those days), he’d been able to reach out to her when he woke up scared and whisper “Mummy” and be held by Win.

Now, he was out there, only a few days after they had got him back after he had been kidnapped, and he was all alone.

Win shuddered.

Eventually, there was the sound of a key in the front door lock, and she jumped up. Certainly, Fred would have called her to let her know he was coming, despite it being… she checked… almost three am.

She rushed into the hallway to find her son shedding his coat. “Dev!” She pulled him into her arms.

It was when she felt him stiffen that she knew something was wrong. He had always welcomed her touch – always. Even when he had been going through his terrible twos, she had usually been able to calm him down with a hug.

And then Dev – _her Endeavour_ – actually physically pushed her away. “What are you doing up, Mum?” he spat.

“I was waiting for you” she replied, unsure how to confront this snappish, unfriendly version of the boy she’d raised and loved as if she had born him herself.

“Whatever for!?”

Helplessly, she reached out to him again, to stroke his cheek or run her fingers through his hair, but he slapped her hand away. “For God’s sake, woman” he hissed. “Stop the fussing!”

Before she could say another thing, he’d grabbed his coat from the hanger again and said, “I am going back to my place”.

He then slammed the door behind himself without another word.

She immediately called the station, guessing that Fred had probably gone there to check for reports on accidents.

Win wished she could have sounded relieved and joyful, but a sob escaped her as she told her husband that Dev had gone to his place and Fred became very quiet at the other end.

She had to tell him the truth then, of course.

He hung up soon afterwards with the promise of looking after Dev.

She then called Peter Jakes, who undoubtedly had not yet gone to sleep either. Such a dear boy, really; she was glad her son had had him at his side these last ten years.

She tried her best, but sniffled a bit when talking to him as well, and then Peter was asking quietly, “IS everything alright, Mrs. – Win?”

Somehow, it was easier to talk about this to him than Fred. Maybe because he knew Dev so well. “Oh Peter” she replied. “He came home and he – he told me to stop fussing!”

It was a silly thing to cry over, of course it was, but at least Peter’s stunned silence told her she wasn’t overreacting.

* * *

After the Commander had left – finally – they snarled and kicked the Captain’s sorry excuse for a coffee table.

The assignment was an honour they well deserved, but it had several disadvantages.

For one, the bastard’s fussy mother. Oh God, _his mother_. Always touching, always after him to eat something, always _so_ concerned for her boy, even though he wasn’t even hers.

Or his siblings, running after him as if they were ducklings who had imprinted on them. It was pathetic.

The Commander was another problem, a sniffling, utterly pathetically devoted creature who (they were rather certain) still didn’t trust them completely. Hah. They would soon take him down a peg. And maybe they could get rid off him altogether, make it look like an accident…

The worst part of this job, though, was the father. Oh, they could escape the others from time to time, but wherever they went, on Guard or police business, the Old Man would show up like a determined Pitbull as of they were not the Captain but a small boy who had to be protected.

They gave the table another kick for good measure. The bond went both ways, and so he could feel the Captain’s terror, which gave him satisfaction, and something else, which did not.

There was so much love in his pathetic heart, so much love for that despicable family of his and Peter Jakes and his friends; really, apart from his powers, what was apparently so special about this weak, annoying human –

And then there was hope, despite everything. Oh, they knew that the Captain thought he’d given up, that he didn’t intend to get away alive; but he was human, and humans _always_ hoped.

They would teach him how wrong he was. They would finish this assignment, and then they would kill everyone he loved with their bare hands, and then they would go to him and tell him what they had done to his loved ones and the Guard, and then they’d choke the life out of him.

* * *

Sally knew she should have been relieved, should have been glad that they got the Captain back. The Commander had done a good job leading them, but he had also been prepared to work himself to death if it meant finding him. They had all been desperate, but Commander Jakes had been a different person altogether without the Captain at his side…

Not to mention the Captain’s entire family; even his mother had occasionally dropped by, all but begging for news. 

So, really, Sally should have been very happy that things could go back to normal.

Only… well, she had been an officer of the law, magical and otherwise, for quite some time now, not to mention she herself was a creature; and her instincts were crying out a warning.

She prided herself on knowing the Captain quite well, and being rather well-liked by him too; and he certainly sounded and looked and acted like himself. For the most part.

And then there were those little things that made her make a double-take, things that didn’t seem to fit.

For example, on the day he returned to work, an old case came up in conversation.

“One of the first ones after I joined” she remembered.

“Ah yes, Lieutenant, and when would that have been again? Help me out.”

Something in her screamed. The Captain knew because he kept all their personal files in his office and considered it his duty to know them by heart.

She told him, hoping he didn’t notice her slight hesitation.

And then… there was his and the Commander’s relationship. They had been very close, almost like brothers, since Sally could remember; there was a reason the commander hadn’t allowed him to return to Oxford alone.

Now, there was a distance between them that the Commander was trying rather frantically to overcome.

Only to be met with nothing but – yes, almost _indifference_ on the Captain’s side.

It made no sense; certainly, eh didn’t blame him for his kidnapping, and he had found him, had worked the hardest to do so.

Sally wondered if she should drop a few hints to the other members of the Guard; it seemed like something someone else might have noticed.

The day she first got definitive proof that something was terribly wrong had started out like many others. The Captain and Commander had left mid-morning to pursue some small inquiries, and Sally expected it to turn into an uneventful afternoon.

Instead, the door was thrown open around two, and the Captain stormed in. “Never question my judgement again!”

“It’s entirely possible that the thief was a dragon, but you all but accused him to his face, Dev –“ the Commander began somewhat helplessly only to be interrupted coldly.

“That’s sir – when we’re at work, Commander.”

He stared at the Captain with wide eyes, swallowed, then quietly said, “I apologize for my transgression, _sir_.”

True, the Captain calmed down after that, but still – he’d just talked to him as if he was just some officer of the Guard, and in a manner he normally wouldn’t even use when talking to someone else.

Sally caught Richard’s eyes. He too, looked pale.

Something was wrong.


End file.
